Monday, January 30, 2012

Sustainable Shark Fishing? Starts With a Study

Sustainable shark fishing? You need data first

A MURDOCH University PhD student will spend a year living
among Indonesian shark fishermen to investigate their impact on shark
populations and the effects of conservation efforts on fishing
communities.

Vanessa Jaiteh hopes her project, beginning at the end of this week
through Murdoch’s Asia Research Centre and Centre for Fish, Fisheries
and Aquatic Ecosystems, will contribute to future sustainability of
declining fish stocks in Indonesia that support thousands of villagers
living in poverty.

“I’m trying to identify trade-offs between shark management
initiatives and their impact on the livelihood, security, and economic
welfare of remote shark fishing communities,” she says.
Ms Jaiteh’s 14-month field research involves her living in three or
four remote fishing villages in the Maluku Spice Islands and West Papua
for several months at a time, going on fishing expeditions and doing
fish market surveys.

Once she has a feel for how they live she will conduct structured interviews and focus group discussions.

Ms Jaiteh will also assess shark numbers and sizes from fixed camera
footage and onboard observations of captured sharks to gain some of the
first significant data on Indonesian shark populations and uncover the
effectiveness of conservation areas and how much fishing pressure it can
sustain.

While Indonesia is the world’s largest harvester of shark fin, the
industry remains largely unregulated with no legal framework beyond a
2006 national action plan of only a few pages that are not based on
scientific findings.

However, Ms Jaiteh says marine management efforts “are often based on
biological data alone, and therefore do not take into account the
livelihood requirements of local fishers as stakeholders”.
“If fishers are not considered in management decisions, the result
could be illegal fishing or greater poverty among fishing communities,”
she says.

Ms Jaiteh says a potential way to improve the situation would be to
get villagers out of shark fishing and into aquaculture, especially as
Indonesia wants to double its fishing productivity by 2014.

Ms Jaiteh’s research is made possible by the Prime Minister’s
Australia Asia Outgoing Postgraduate Award, which provides financial
support for Australian postgraduate students to do research in Asia that
works towards strengthening the relationships between Australia and
Asian countries.